Nation- different definitions

Samir Amin
|There is little doubt as to the reality of what is commonly called "the nation." The mere fact that most people claim to be a | |
|part of a specific nation, which means they consider the common traits--real or imaginary--they share with other members of | |
|their national group to be more important than what separates them, establishes the incontrovertible socialreality designated | |
|by the term "nation." | |
|However, the acceptance of this--obvious--reality in no way implies that one should cease trying to study and understand its |5 |
|nature, limits, and contradictions, much less that one should accept the myths through whichsuch nations live out their | |
|existence. For the concept of "nation" has deep mythological roots, among which are the myths that present it as "natural" | |
|(thus revealing a biological perception leading to racism), whereas it actually constitutes a social and historical reality. | |
|Furthermore, the social and historical trends that led to the creation of suchnations have not been identical for all peoples.| |
|It is therefore essential to point out the differences in these trends, because these differences explain the deep divisions |10 |
|between the diverse concepts of nationhood. | |
|The concept of "nation," as with all concepts that define any humancommunity, is based on a fundamental contradiction, which | |
|opposes universality--of the human species, of its destiny, of its societal forms--to the particularity of the communities that| |
|make up humanity. How do these particularities connect with the requirements of universality, either to clash with it, or on | |
|the contrary to merge with it, or even to submit to it(or pretend to do so)? The task of scientific analysis consists |15 |
|precisely in reading the myths, perceptions, and concepts relating to the nation in such a way as to reveal this contradictory | |
|relationship. | |
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http://iupjournals.org/ral/ral28-4.html (Oct. 11, 2006)

Carolyn Stephenson
|In what Seymour Martin Lipset has called The First New Nation, the United States, at first 13 colonies with diverse origins, | |
|came together to form a new nation and state.[1] That state, like so many incontemporary times, faced the prospect of | |
|secession and disintegration in 1865, and it took another 100 years for the integration of black and white, North and South, | |
|East and West. This was a new type of nation-state, because its people were not all of the same ethnicity, culture, and | |
|language, as had been thought to be the case in the earlydefining of the concept of nation-state. |5 |
|But nation-building by one nation may destroy others. In the building of the US nation and others, aboriginal nations were | |
|erased or marginalized. The Six-Nations Confederacy of the Iriquois had existed before the US nation (and was thought by some | |
|to be a model for it). Today many "First Nations"are in the process of nation re-building, re-building the social, cultural, | |
|economic and political foundations for what is left of self-governance. First nations seek to re-build cultural identities as | |
|nations in order to challenge their disintegration by others in the creation of their own states. |10 |
|Association of First Nations...